[estebank]

YIMBYism is about relaxed zoning so that commerce and diverse types of housing aren't physically segregated, but even in the most "free" places industry is segregated because the needs of industry are incompatible with human habitation. No one wants to live next to a refinery, nor should they be put in a position where that's their only option.

(I get that you're being ironic.)

[cucumber3732842]

> No one wants to live next to a refinery

I do.

Specifically because of who doesn't.

My neighborhood is across the street from a company that specializes in the repair of hydraulic hammers, a water treatment plant, paper mill and recycling center and a freight rail so we've got it pretty good as is but I see no reason not to continue improving.

[kunai]

Yeah no worries, apart from the facetiousness I'm a pretty YIMBY person un-ironically. But it is infuriating that people adopt YIMBY rhetoric to try and defend data centers and other harmful industrial uses in areas with high land value. It's not only completely counter to the ideals of YIMBYism but also insulting as YIMBY has always been about lowering housing and commercial use costs through heavily relaxed zoning, NOT pushing through anything that anyone wants to develop in some sort of libertarian wet dream.

[JuniperMesos]

YIMBYism is about telling people who are mad about some structure being built near where they live, and who are engaging in poltical activism to try to stop that construction, that their anger about the structure shouldn't let them stop it from existing.

In this respect there is very little difference between a NIMBY getting mad about a data center and getting mad about a new housing development that will make the area more crowded and use more water.

The only difference is that you yourself are mad about data centers. If you are a YIMBY generally-speaking try to see how the anger you feel about data centers is like the anger your opponents have about new housing, and let that empathy make you a more effective YIMBY.

[saltcured]

Honestly, it sounds kind of incoherent to me. How do you imagine YIMBY relaxing zoning and allowing things at lower cost and not simultaneously allowing people with money to push through what they want?

It sounds more like you are saying YIMBY but imagining MIMBY (maybe in my ...) where you've just replaced those other guys making the decisions with your own cabal?

[jjk166]

> How do you imagine YIMBY relaxing zoning and allowing things at lower cost and not simultaneously allowing people with money to push through what they want?

Relaxing zoning laws never meant throwing them completely out the window. It has always been a matter of pruning zoning rules that overly restrict land use to the point that minor deviation from the norm is impossible.

[saltcured]

Whatever the level of relaxation, I don't understand how you think it is going to enable low cost development of your preferred things, while excluding those with money from absolutely pushing rules to their limits to build their preferred things..?

[jjk166]

Let's say the law is currently "this area is zoned for single family residences limited to at most two stories" and you change that law to "this area is zoned for residences limited to at most four stories." You have relaxed the law. It doesn't guarantee that you will get higher density housing, but the zoning obstacle has been removed and in many cases that is the sticking point.

Such a change does not permit a massive datacenter, or an oil refinery, or even a 5 story apartment building to be built. The laws aren't being pushed, they are being purposefully changed.

Now if some city council members get an attractive offer "for their constituents" to rezone a plot of land to build a datacenter on, that doesn't really have anything to do with the original zoning restrictions, and certainly is not affected by the YIMBY efforts. Zoning reform is not a strategy to reduce corruption.